Experts gather in city to discuss how to feed the world

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This article was published 26/09/2017 (2944 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Issues no less weighty than discussing how to feed the world will be taking place in Winnipeg over the next few days during the 17th Agricultural Bioscience International Conference (ABIC).

Bioscience, agricultural and environmental technology experts — as well as investors — from around the world will be in Winnipeg, including some of the most influential thought leaders at the top of their industries.

“We are at a very interesting time when it comes to food production,” said Tracey Maconachie, the CEO of the Life Science Association of Manitoba, part of the organizing and host committee that brought the prestigious conference to Winnipeg. (Next year it will be held in Beijing, China.)

“The global population is going to peak in about 30 years when demand for food will peak,” she said. “All of the data suggests we cannot feed the world using traditional farming techniques and traditional food supplies. This conversation is significant.”

Rohit Shukla, the CEO and founder of the Los Angeles-based Larta Institute, an internationally-recognized technology accelerator, was the first presenter at the conference on Monday afternoon.

He agrees that this is an important moment in history for agricultural technology.

“I believe there is progress being made (in terms of feeding the world). I am an optimist,” he said in an interview.

He said that right now enough food is being produced, but the question is, is it the right food?

“That is why alternative protein (from insects, for instance) is becoming so important,” he said. “About 80 per cent of the world exists on vegetable-based protein. Yet the appetite for meat in places like China and India has increased dramatically, which leads essentially to two things: wasteful use of land and an incredible increase in the emission of methane gases, which are very dangerous.”

He said among the companies that the Larta Institute has helped commercialize technology for is an Argentinian company that has developed grasses that will greatly reduce the amount of methane produced from the cattle that feed on it.

He said there is an obligation and an opportunity for agricultural technology companies to make new technologies available where it is needed around the world, even if the business case has not yet been determined.

Shukla spoke about how the business of innovation applies to agriculture and food, and perhaps successful commercialization of innovation requires new models for connecting people and resources across the value chain.

Maconachie pointed out that the movement towards more consumption of local, fresh foods is a luxury that mostly people in North America and Europe are able to indulge in.

“But in places like Asia and elsewhere, they don’t have the luxury of going to the supermarket and getting all their fresh fruit and vegetables. They have to grow them and, unless they have the best environment to grow those foods, they are not going to be able to feed themselves.

“That is among the things that will be discussed here,” she said. “It’s not just about how to feed North Americans, but how will we feed the people who need to grow their own foods and live in the developing world where food production is more challenging than it is in Manitoba.”

In addition to Shukla, other speakers at the event at the RBC Convention Centre include Catherine Ann Bertini, who was named 2003 World Food Prize Laureate for her leadership transforming the United Nations World Food Program into the largest and most responsive humanitarian organization in the world; James Dale of Australia’s Queensland University of Technology, who was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 25 Innovators in 2014 for developing a vitamin A-enriched “super banana”; and Jean-Marc Gilson, CEO of the Roquette Group, the French company that is in the process of building the world’s largest pea processing plant near Portage la Prairie.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca